Biography

An influential Wiltshire lawyer and estate-manager whose career revolved around services to the Crown and the Beauchamp family, Robert Andrew came from an obscure background. Early in his career he was holding property in Gloucestershire (at Eastleach and Williamstrip). Yet it seems likely that he was a relation, perhaps even a son, of John Andrew of Cricklade, for his interests were for several years centred on the Cricklade area, where, indeed, lay the greater part of his landed holdings. By 1408 he had two manors near the town — Chapel Eaton and Castle Eaton — where by episcopal licence he could hear mass privately; and he also occasionally resided at nearby Blunsdon St. Andrew, a property which, together with his other holdings, was assessed in 1412 as worth 38 marks a year. Subsequently, he acquired the neighbouring manor of Purton Stoke and land at Chelworth, Lushill and Stratton, considerably expanding his interests in the locality by purchasing parts of the inheritance of Eleanor, daughter of Sir Ivo Fitzwaryn*, including 200 acres of wood in the royal forest of Braydon (1415) and the manor of ‘Brians’ in Wantage, Berkshire (1418). Other of Andrew’s acquisitions were the manor of Thrup by Ramsbury (1419) and the manor and advowson of Chalfield. Meanwhile, his second marriage had brought him possession not only of the Wiltshire estate previously belonging to William Wynslow, one-time pavillioner to Richard II, as held by his wife in dower (this comprising a manor and some 450 acres of land at Ramsbury), but also the Poure lands in Charlton-on-Otmoor, Wendlebury and elsewhere in Oxfordshire and Berkshire, which she had inherited from her brother. Outside Wiltshire, Andrew also obtained an estate in Worcestershire (namely, the manor of Marsh in Eldersfield, which he acquired before 1431) and property in the city of London.3

Andrew’s career had begun by 1397, although its early years appear to have been mainly taken up with minor transactions. He was then generally referred to as ‘of Cricklade’, and it was for this borough that he was first returned to Parliament. In 1402 and 1403 he was associated with Nicholas Sambourn II*, both as a feoffee of lands which they conveyed to Malmesbury abbey, and as a trustee of Sambourn’s own property; and between then and 1410 he was frequently linked, as surety or witness, with such local gentry as Nicholas Wotton†, Thomas Cricklade* and John Westbury*.4

In 1410 Andrew was made escheator in Hampshire and Wiltshire, his first known public office; and on 5 Apr. 1413, when, at the beginning of the reign of Henry V, Sir Walter Hungerford* was appointed chief steward of the estates of the duchy of Lancaster in the south parts, Andrew obtained the important subordinate post of steward in six southern counties (to which Buckinghamshire was to be added in 1422). It seems likely that he retained the stewardship for life, and several of the royal commissions to which he was subsequently appointed concerned matters relating to the administration of the duchy lands. In April 1415 he was named as an executor to the chamberlain of the duchy, Hugh Mortimer*; and in July of the same year he joined William Whaplode*, feodary of the duchy lands in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, as a member of a syndicate which received the manor of Chesham, Buckinghamshire, as security for the repayment of a loan of £400 advanced to Richard de Vere, earl of Oxford. Later in 1415 Andrew was included in the commission of the peace for Wiltshire, on which he remained, almost without a break, until his death. At the time of Andrew’s first return to Parliament as a knight of the shire in 1416 Hugh Mortimer was treasurer of England, but he died during the parliamentary recess that spring. Andrew maintained links with his co-executors of Mortimer’s will: with two of them, John Wilcotes* and Master William Ingram, he was to be granted in March 1418 an Exchequer lease of part of the manor of Wendover, Buckinghamshire, during the minority of the duke of York. In the following year (in July 1419) he stood surety for Wilcotes when the latter obtained custody of lands in Oxfordshire; and in his capacity as sheriff of that county he held the elections to Parliament later in the year, at which Wilcotes was returned for the 11th time.5

Meanwhile, Andrew had begun the association with the Beauchamp family which was to last for the rest of his life. His first connexion appears to have been with Richard Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny, and his wife Isabel Despenser, a connexion doubtless encouraged by his colleague Hugh Mortimer, who had close links with the Despensers, and one which may have begun as early as 1414, when Andrew was a member of a royal commission to inquire into the estates of a Despenser tenant. But more important were Andrew’s links with the senior branch of the Beauchamps, headed by Abergavenny’s cousin Richard, earl of Warwick. By 1417 he had been retained by the earl as steward of the former Lisle manors in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire and at South Cerney, Gloucestershire, with an annual fee of £4 chargeable to the manor of Chilton and an annuity of £7 11s.7d. from Nethercote, Wiltshire. In April 1421 Warwick’s countess, Elizabeth, on her way from Malmesbury to Chilton, stayed overnight at Andrew’s inn at Swindon. Meanwhile, in 1419, Andrew had acted as Lord Abergavenny’s attorney during the latter’s absence in France, and in that capacity he presented to ecclesiastical livings in the lord’s gift.6 Following Abergavenny’s death in 1422, Andrew’s attachment to Warwick (who married his cousin’s widow a year later) became even stronger, and in all probability he joined the earl’s council, with other members of which he was frequently associated. In 1425, along with John Baysham, Warwick’s receiver-general, John Throckmorton*, the Warwick chamberlain in the royal Exchequer, and John Verney, one of the earl’s clerks, he was named as a feoffee of some 18 of Warwick’s manors, all of which were part of the Abergavenny inheritance. (He subsequently served as steward of one of these properties: Spelsbury in Oxfordshire.) It was as a member of the earl’s entourage that he was admitted to the fraternity of St. Albans abbey that same year. In July 1426, with John, Lord Talbot, the earl’s son-in-law, and Throckmorton, Andrew was party to a recognizance for £3,000, undertaking that within six months one of them would deliver Warwick’s indenture of service in France to the keeper of the privy seal, and in the same month Andrew and Throckmorton were Talbot’s sureties for the purchase of a crown wardship. Twice in 1427 and again in 1431 Andrew, acting as one of Warwick’s proctors and feoffees, presented to livings in the gift of the Beauchamp family. Meanwhile, in 1429, along with Throckmorton, Verney and John Shirley (the earl’s secretary), he had entered into a recognizance for 500 marks with the abbot of Westminster, and had again served as one of the earl’s feoffees when estates of the alien priory of Grovebury (Bedfordshire) were sold in reversion to Warwick by the trustees of the late Sir John Phelip*. Andrew owed his office as acting sheriff of Worcestershire in 1431-2 to the earl, who held the shrievalty in fee. On occasion, during his 20 or more years in the service of the Beauchamps, he appeared as Warwick’s agent at the Exchequer. Finally, between 1432 and 1435, once again with Throckmorton (who was now under treasurer of the Exchequer), Andrew acted as Warwick’s feoffee of manors in Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Suffolk.7

In addition to his commitments as servant and estate-manager to both the earl of Warwick and the duchy of Lancaster, Andrew was extremely active in the reign of Henry VI, both in the service of the Crown and in private land transactions. Towards the end of the previous reign he had been busy as a trustee of the extensive estates of Eleanor Fitzwaryn and her second husband, Ralph Bush*, in Dorset, Somerset and elsewhere, and he subsequently agreed to help implement their wills, in particular with regard to the welfare of their children. In 1422 he was returned to Parliament for Wiltshire again, this time in association with Sir William Sturmy, for whom he had previously attested deeds. Other Members of this Parliament included John Greville and John Langley, both of whom were co-feoffees of his in certain Oxfordshire properties (on behalf of Elizabeth, widow of William Wilcotes*), and ten days after the session ended he was associated with Thomas Chaucer* and other fellow MPs in purchasing land at Harringay, Middlesex. At Easter 1423 (in which year he obtained a papal licence to have a portable altar), he joined with three apprentices-at-law in entering into a recognizance for £550 in favour of Henry, Lord Fitzhugh, an executor of Henry V. In 1424 he was granted the office of keeper of Braydon forest, a property of the duchy of Lancaster which lay only a few miles from his home. That same year he appears to have been a feoffee for the sale of the Lovell family manors of Knook and Upton, Wiltshire, and Sutton Waldron, Dorset, to John Roger I* of Bryanston.8

On at least three occasions — in 1425, 1426 and 1432 — Andrew was appointed by the abbot of Malmesbury to be his proctor in the House of Lords. He himself had been elected to one of these Parliaments, that summoned to Leicester in 1426 which came to be known as the ‘Parliament of Bats’ because of the threat of armed dissension there between the factions of Henry, Cardinal Beaufort, and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Andrew, as a duchy officer, was of Beaufort’s party, as is clear from the events of a few years later, when he was able to bring the cardinal’s influence to bear in a dispute over the office of constable of Trowbridge, a duchy manor of which he was steward. Some six years previously (1420) Andrew and his nephew, John Borne, had acquired the manor of West Chalfield from the Rous family, whose eldest member, William Rous, continued to hold the manor of Great Chalfield, with the appurtenant office of constable of Trowbridge. Andrew, coveting this office, first, in 1431, attempted to eject William and his brother, John Rous III*, from the manor in question by force, inciting ‘many men of Salisbury ... to have entred upon the seid William Rous at Estchaldfeld and to have put him therefro’. The Rous brothers, however, were supporters of Gloucester and called on the duke’s armed servants to repel the attack. Andrew now used his political influence with Beaufort, for William Rous had been one of those who had appeared in support of Gloucester at the Leicester Parliament, ‘which comyng of seid Wm. Rous [had been] gretly noticed and disdeyned by the seid cardenall’. The latter and Andrew now ‘by their assent to gedres of malice put the seid William Rous from the seid office’, replacing him with Andrew’s nephew.9

During the interval between the two sessions of the Parliament of 1433, Andrew’s last, he must have been busy as one of the executors of Thomas Polton, bishop of Worcester, who had died at the General Council of Basel on 25 Aug. Incidentally, Polton had bequeathed him £20, half as much again as each of the other executors received. Andrew was among some 40 commoners summoned to attend meetings of a great council extending over a fortnight from 24 Apr. 1434 (meetings at which the discussions turned on Gloucester’s offer to take over the conduct of the war in France, but which broke down over the difficulty of meeting the cost of his plans). In July 1435 he made a loan of 40 marks to the Crown, and in February 1436, when special financial aid was needed for the duke of York’s expedition to France, he was approached for a further loan of £40.10

Andrew made his will on 11 Apr. 1437 and died two days later at Blunsdon St. Andrew, where he was buried. Two weeks before, he had made over most of his lands to trustees, including his lord, Richard, earl of Warwick, John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells, then chancellor, Thomas Rodbourne, bishop of St. Davids, and Master William Ingram, prebendary of Highworth. Stafford and Rodbourne were also supervisors of his will, and Ingram was among the executors, who included his wife Agnes, John Throckmorton and Robert Cricklade†. Andrew died childless, his heir being his nephew, John Borne (son of his sister Agnes).11 In about 1440 his widow addressed two petitions to Stafford, as chancellor, with regard to certain properties in Cricklade, Chelworth and Stratton, of which Andrew had enfeoffed him, alleging in one that Geoffrey Cowbridge* had put her out of the premises, and in the other that Henry Filkes had wrongfully dispossessed Stafford himself and his co-feoffees. The heir to Agnes Andrew’s own lands, when she died about two years later, was her son, Thomas Wynslow†, who by then had married one of the daughters of John Throckmorton, his stepfather’s friend and executor.12